Chapter 6 Chapter 5 Journey to the North

I went to Beijing to talk to Wang Shuo. In late April, one day, our literature department suddenly came to a strange task. An old editor and I led four college students who came to the factory for internship to the factory reference room to look through literature magazines, saying that they wanted to provide clues to Zhang Yimou’s novels. Zhang Yimou I need a clue about urban themes, preferably about young people, and I must have a clue in June. In the 1980s, what could be more honorable for a filmmaker than working for Zhang Yimou?As for what the elites think, we don't care at all. What we care about is the people. The great leader said it well: the people, and only the people, are the driving force for creating history.Let the college send to meet his mother's ghost!Zhang Yimou is our hero, he is the great savior of the movie, Hu Er Ke yo.With the box office, our entire factory has been saved.

As I write this, I suddenly think of a little friend of mine back then.The child's surname is Wei. Because of his love of literature, he took a strange pen name Xiaochong. When Xiaochong met me, he was still studying in Nanning No. 3 Middle School. No. 3 Middle School is the best middle school in Nanning, with a 98.7% admission rate. Xiaochong was admitted to the Chinese Department of Fudan University in Shanghai without any problems.During the winter vacation, Xiaochong came back from Shanghai and came to play with me in the library dormitory, and chatted with Zhang Yimou within three sentences.

Zhang Yimou's name is like a wonderful catalyst, making Xiao Chong's tea-yellow face glow with a beautiful red, her eyes are shining, and the shining eyes say, Zhang Yimou, we really admire him, We often talk about him in the dorm room.She wanted to say something to talk about, but they stuck in her throat, partly excited, partly difficult to say (they found Zhang Yimou particularly masculine, with his furrowed brows and knife-sharpened face. One is not a source of charm, meanwhile, they are inexplicably jealous of Gong Li).Suddenly, she said as if arguing with me: Zhang Yimou is not rude at all!

I was taken aback by this statement, and to show that I was completely in agreement with her, I said: The idea of ​​soil and non-soil reflects a kind of cultural hegemony. Xiaochong felt that this remark was particularly relieved, and even said: "That's it."There was a Beijing girl in their dormitory, who lived in the compound of the Ministry of Aeronautics and Space, and was very proud on weekdays. Seeing that they were keen to talk about Zhang Yimou, she said: Zhang Yimou is the most rustic, an old farmer.Xiaochong and the others thought that the Beijing girls not only insulted Zhang Yimou, but also all of them. All the girls are like hornets that have been stabbed in a hornet's nest. You bite each other, and the Beijing girls are stung all over the place. In the end, they have to say that Gong Li is worse than Zhang Yimou Only then did the public anger be quelled.

Seeing that Xiaochong was still interested, I told her that Zhang Yimou was from our factory, and I saw his salary bag in the financial office every month when I was getting paid.Xiao Chong immediately jumped up, and she stared at me nervously, as if I had become a liar in an instant.Zhang Yimou is a myth. He should have appeared in Cannes, France, Berlin, Germany, and the Loess Plateau, which was far away by the refraction of Cannes and Berlin (although this yellow land is in northern Shaanxi, but it is in our impression But not in China), how could he be in mediocre Guangxi, and still have a salary bag.

When Xiaochong realized that Zhang Yimou was a person and not a myth, she jumped up again, as if hearing a bolt from the blue, like a communist in a movie facing the firing squad, she said with the determination to go to hell: I must meet Zhang Yimou. From then on, Xiaochong came to our factory by bicycle from Hengyang Road, where her home is located. She first walked along the fence, looked back and forth from the gate to the back door, and then pretended to find Lin Zhizhu from the Department of Literature to enter the factory. After entering the factory, she rode a bicycle around the factory office building, studio, publicity and development department, prop workshop, library, etc. In the studio surrounded by weeds, Xiao Chong also walked in through the crack of the door just like I did back then. See, the bleak, spider-strewn and dusty scene disappointed the bug.She found the side door leading to the dormitory area without a teacher. Among the identical buildings, Xiaochong raised her head and carefully identified the clothes that appeared in Zhang Yimou's photos on the balconies of one house after another.She walked through the kindergarten and the dining hall, and came to the open-air screening room in the family area. Rows of concrete steps raised emptyly in the winter sun, and a few sparrows perched on them.Could it be that Zhang Yimou would watch movies in such a crude screening room?Impossible, absolutely impossible!

Xiaochong came home and called me. I told her that Zhang Yimou had been filming outside the factory for many years and rarely returned to the factory. People like me who lived outside the factory had never seen him, but everyone who lived in the factory knew him. met him.So Xiao Chong insisted that if I saw Zhang Yimou appearing in the factory, I would call her immediately, and she left me the phone number of her parents' work unit.As a result, neither Xiaochong nor I saw Zhang Yimou during the whole winter vacation. Thinking of Xiaochong's love for Zhang Yimou, I feel that my work is very meaningful.

I led four college students to the factory library and brought out "Flower City", "Zhongshan", "Contemporary", "October", "Chinese Writers", "People's Literature", "Authors", and "Youth Literature", and the tables and chairs were all in a mess. .I thought to myself, how can I see the light of day if I read so badly? Why don’t I go to Beijing to find Wang Shuo, and Wang Shuo will give one if he is willing, and he will give up if he doesn’t want to. Volunteer immediately.The director was overjoyed. Our factory is located in a remote place, and the female editors are more timid than the other, and they are more afraid of being tired than the other. They are afraid of bad people and famous people, afraid of taking the train, afraid of not being able to find a place to live, and afraid of being unaccompanied. It doesn't work, and in the end, I'm afraid that I will be ridiculed if I return without success.One year, the factory let a female editor go to Beijing to watch foreign films. This was a good thing, but when she came back, she swore that she would never go to Beijing again in her life.Everyone was baffled, and when they asked, they found out that because Beijing is too big, it takes half an hour to take a bus from where she lives to the movie theater, which made her work very hard from early morning to dark.Now there is a newborn calf, who is not afraid of tigers, and said that she would go to Wang Shuo to compose a manuscript. The director immediately approved, and asked her to go to the financial office to get a sum of money to buy a ticket on the same day, and asked her to have dinner at home at noon. Discuss the matter of going to Beijing to organize manuscripts.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Wang Shuo is a tiger. Although Wang Shuo did not receive the world-renowned international awards like Zhang Yimou, he was deeply loved by young people and the film industry. That year was "Wang Shuo Nian", Wang Shuo's words are worth ten thousand sentences and have already become a prairie fire. I am a hooligan and I am afraid of whom (this is so happy to say, the helpless little man is full of strength when he says this), half is sea water and half is flame (how much is it?) Years later, it will still be a beautiful poem), playing with the beating of the heart, and dying after the addiction, how many youthful blood in the chaos are called by Wang Shuo's quotations, the school system must be shortened, education must be revolutionized, and bourgeois intellectuals rule us The school phenomenon can no longer continue.The leader’s quotations are still fresh in our hearts, and Wang Shuo’s quotations have already entered our minds. They are mixed together, making our blood boil like boiling water and spread out like flames.

Until 1992, when I worked as a reporter for the Cultural Daily, I was invited to the Hong Kong and Macau Center to participate in the financial novel seminar of Hong Kong writer Liang Fengyi. The conference was jointly organized by the People’s Literature Publishing House and the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Some characters that are rarely seen on weekdays.Sitting next to me was a very beautiful girl. She stretched her neck and kept looking around, her face showing anxiety.After the meeting started, she finally couldn't bear it anymore, she first asked me if I saw Wang Shuo, I said Wang Shuo would not come, how could he come?The girl was very puzzled, she grabbed me and asked: Why didn't Wang Shuo come?Why?Why?Why?It seems that Wang Shuo's failure to come is because of my obstruction.She reasoned with me: I heard that all writers would come, why didn't Wang Shuo come?As she spoke, she felt like crying, and she said in a crying voice: I came from Haidian only when I heard that Wang Shuo would come. I didn't even eat breakfast, and I didn't ask for leave from school.They lie.After finishing speaking, the girl left very aggrieved.

I was extremely impressed by this incident. From this, I feel that I was really daring in the 1980s. For ordinary women like me, daring is not to blow up the White House and assassinate Clinton, but to dare to live alone. .I remember that when I spoke wildly, I felt very happy all over my body, but as soon as the director agreed, I immediately felt guilty again. What if I can't find Wang Shuo?What if the group does not return the manuscript?And it's not a contingency at all, it's entirely possible.Sitting at the director's house, eating his fried rice noodles, I felt guilty for a while. Fortunately, the director was very open-minded. He said: Go ahead, if you can’t make Wang Shuo, you can make someone else’s. Other themes are also fine. So, on the last day of April, I came to Beijing by taking five times of express from Nanning to Beijing. Walking into a gray alley, there are elms and pagoda trees in the north above the head, and the blue transparent sky above the branches. I like this kind of sky very much. I looked up and thought to myself: how beautiful, Beijing.I smiled, and something transparent shuttled back and forth between my heart and the outside air, making pure gold sounds like French horns, loud and distant, where did they come from? Halfway through the long alley in a short time, the middle section of the alley is the office buildings of China Youth Publishing House and China Children’s Publishing House. Follow the steps of the doorway to the ground, then turn right, and when you walk to the end, you will arrive at my room.In the basement of the guest house of China Youth Club, there are about a dozen rooms. There are only beds and tables in the rooms. A public telephone extension is placed in the corridor, and the TV is in the duty room. At night, everyone huddles together to watch TV. The room I lived in was a double room, eight yuan a day, and the other bed was basically unoccupied. I lived in this room for two full months.Such a stable single dormitory made me feel like I was at home, even more convenient than home. In the dormitory of Guangxi Library, I had to go down the fourth floor to the counseling office to make a phone call. If someone was off work, I had no choice but to stop calling.There is no TV. If I really want to watch it, I go to someone else's house.The living facilities here are so complete. There are bathrooms, dining halls and videos in the compound. The bathroom was filled with steam, and one after another, white female bodies emerged from the steam, as beautiful as swans. They appeared in front of my eyes with a different expression and a different movement, which made me dazed.When I was getting dressed, I saw a young girl on the opposite chair. Her wet hair covered her entire face. I don't know if it was because her skin was so white that her hair was so black, or it was the other way around.When I put on my underwear, I felt her looking at me. When I looked up, I saw a shiny black eye protruding from the thick black hair on her face, and a small section of face equal to the width of the eyes, with strong snow white and jet black. , just like the light of two kinds of black and white lightning intersecting together, this high-intensity brightness almost made me fall backwards.Her eyes were hidden behind her hair, and she was silent, with a strange and solitary beauty.I think this person looks like an ancient Japanese beauty, holding a short sword and preparing to commit seppuku.Who is she?For no reason, I thought she must be Tianying. Tianying was a new female writer back then. There were many rumors about her in the literary world. I haven't seen her photos, but I heard that she is cold, charming and charming, and has fascinated countless men.It is said that she stepped on the body of a man and entered the literary world with lightning speed, so most decent people show their disdain to her to show their integrity. I was also going to squint at her, sideways.But her eerie beauty was like a light whose energy changed my sight.Back then, I was such a free bug, following the guidance of life, where there was happiness and beauty, I flew like a moth. It was a long time later that I found out that Tianying indeed had one-sixth of Japanese blood, and had translated the novels of the Japanese female writer Yoshimoto Banana. For a long time, my understanding of Tianying was limited to her relationship with men.Gossip always travels farther than anything else, and men and women alike say nothing about her talent.Two years later, I heard that Tianying really went east to Japan. At that time, I was working as a reporter for Wenhua Daily. When I heard the news, the petals of cherry blossoms immediately filled my eyes. Among the flying white petals, a woman with thick hair drooped Her shoulders covered half of her face. She was holding a long sword with a cold light shining on it. Her bright red lips were reflected on the pale sword. Of course, this is not Tianying herself, and the woman I met in the bathroom is not Tianying either.She hides in my body and emerges at certain moments. The cabbage tofu in the canteen of China Youth Society is also hidden in my body like Tianying, which is more real than Tianying.I imitated others, carrying my rice bowl and queuing up to get food. I was surrounded by Mandarin, and I felt as if I was melting into the life of the capital.I found that the Chinese cabbage in Beijing is really delicious, and the tofu in the Chinese cabbage stewed tofu is really delicious. I have never eaten such tofu. It is frozen and has many fine meshes, like the yuba in my hometown. Beijing is really Beijing. Even the tofu is extraordinary. Its mesh is filled with the mellow sweet juice of Chinese cabbage. Biting it into the mouth, the mellow taste spreads all over the body.The best thing to eat is the rice in Beijing. The rice in the north has a long sunshine time, which makes the rice exude a strong rice fragrance and has the stickiness like glutinous rice.The tempting aroma of the dishes wafted up from the front of the line, and the Chinese cabbage stewed tofu juice was mixed with the steaming rice, which made me not get tired of eating it for a hundred years. Soy milk in Beijing is actually packed in bags.oil cake.fritters.Salted radish.Baked Sweet Potatoes.Everything becomes meaningful.All the ordinary foods have been transformed, shining brightly, appearing in beautiful colors, and resounding in my impression of Beijing. In the roaring sound, I saw the planes flying in the meeting room of the China Youth Society. If they were not American planes in the Vietnam War, what were they?The sultry cicada sounded, the impenetrable jungle, bullets, banana leaves, coconut trees, burning flames, black smoke, air waves, blood, blood, blood, "Field Platoon". Compared with "Apocalypse Now", "Platoon" is a dull movie, but the conference room is full of people. When they heard about the video of "Platoon", everyone felt that they had to stick to it.And I think it is a kind of happiness.Movies are my life, it passes through my body alternately with real life, one minute ago I was in the basement of the China Youth Society, and the next minute I was traveling through time and space, into the jungle of Vietnam, crazy plants entangled me The fire burned my eyes, and I entered the illusory world so deeply into Vietnam that I awakened the potential of Vietnam in me. During the more than two months in Beijing, I always Claiming to be Vietnamese to people you meet for the first time in order to create a veil of mystery for yourself. The basement has thus become my paradise. I used to think it was the opposite of heaven, hell.The basement is a word for a dark place, damp, moldy, and gloomy, which comes from Dostoevsky's "Notes on a House of the Dead".To live in a basement is to live in an underground prison, and this is how some people understand it. She said: You live in the basement?You are so young!You don't have to care. Hearing someone associate the basement with being young just made it even better for me how nice the basement is.And the woman in front of me is so beautiful, her words are even more true. She sits in front of me.Her name isn't catchy enough, but her beauty more than makes up for it. She is in her forties, and I have never seen such a complete beauty in a woman in her forties.For such a woman, I can't call her teacher, nor can I call her elder sister or aunt. It would seem strange to use ordinary addresses on her, so I can only call her by her first name. Wu Yu. Wu Yu said: Lin Zhuzhu, this name is very nice.She also said, your image is also good, you can play a fisherman girl. Only people in the film industry love to imagine others playing a certain role anytime and anywhere.Wu Yu is not only a film actor, but also a film playwright, and a novelist.She lives in Xiaoxitian's Beiying dormitory. On the phone, she said: Take the subway, go to Jishuitan, cross the bridge over the moat, and walk a little further, and you will be there.A gray yard, with a big tree (is it a pagoda tree? Or an elm tree), and there is a faucet under the tree (is that where the stars on the screen stand and wash their clothes?).I went into a house, which was very dark, and groped my way to the landing.Wooden floor, very dark corridor, doors on both sides facing each other.I went to the very end and knocked on one of the doors. She appeared through the door in a radiant light. I think she is like a queen who can command countless men.I suddenly asked to see her album, and she handed it over quickly.Sure enough, there was a group photo of her with the Vice Premier of the State Council, not one, but a series.She accompanied the vice premier to Tibet and took group photos in front of snow mountains, temples, Potala Palace and tents. (Without her, these photos would be eclipsed) But she never abused her rights, she mentioned another actress-turned-female writer, she said, do you know where she lived in Beijing?Live in Diaoyutai State Guesthouse. Every woman is a piece of Tianfang Yetan. The name Wu E was about to disappear as soon as it appeared, which made me feel sorry.She said that she doesn't have a notebook now, and she is writing a novel, which will take a whole year to write, and she will give it to me when she has a notebook.She left me to eat, and I looked around, her room was spotless, and there were no fireworks in the world.While in doubt, Wu E said that she hired an hourly worker, and then I saw a very clean girl, she was cooking in the corridor, she left after cooking, leaving Wu E and me to eat Fried pancakes (I still think this is a weird food). A woman who doesn't even make pancakes has countless stories.Maybe one day she will write about her life herself, and I am very curious about that.I have a deep curiosity for all women who go beyond the norm.But I want to say goodbye to Wu Yu now, goodbye, Wu Yu, maybe one day in the future, I will hear about your scandal, and then your body will be embedded in the dim corridor of Xiaoxitian, beyond the fourth-level pollution in Beijing Air, come to Dongcheng, your face is as clear as yesterday, but I am in a trance.